A Letter to the Reader:

425 Sutardja Dai Hall

2594 Hearst Ave.

Berkeley, CA 94709

4/4/18

Dear Reader:

My name is Jack Wilson, and I am a postdoc researching for the Berkeley Artificial Intelligence Research (BAIR) Lab. As a postdoc, my job is to research exciting questions like, Will AI take over the world? What will happen to our jobs? and then write papers about my results. I chose a few of my papers that I enjoyed and felt were very important to display on my website to show what I’ve done. I have the powerpoint of the talk I gave at TEDxBerkeley 2018, an essay, a news article published in TIME magazine, the transcription of an interview of me that a student from Albany Middle School conducted, and a weekly journal I have started recently.

All the items I have on my website really show how what I’ve learned as a researcher and student at UC Berkeley. As a postdoc, I focused on a range of topics: the history of AI, the effect AI may or may not have on our jobs, and whether or not AI will take over the world. In the powerpoint of the talk I gave at the TEDxBerkeley 2018, I talked about the history of AI. In the essay I wrote, I focused on the effect AI may or may not have on our jobs. In my article that TIME magazine published, I talked specifically about the strength of AI and how that relates to our jobs. In the interview that was conducted of me, I made clearer the strength of AI and what that means for taking over the world. So far, in my weekly journal, I have been talking about the use of AI in warfare, which has many more points than I thought.

I really love working with AI, because it is amazing to be part of a team of researchers that are trying to make something that can think using real and legitimate techniques. The most challenging part of what I do is trying to think of new ideas when one proposal fails, and also to educate people what real AI is really like, and how it is different from sci-fi books. It really surprises me that most people are scared of AI for reasons that become ridiculous after you learn more about AI. Next up, I want to find out how to adjust the deep learning algorithm to be able to learn 3D actions accurately from videos.

Sincerely,

Jack Wilson